


The Cost

by Shatterpath



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Addiction, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-10-30
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:41:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shatterpath/pseuds/Shatterpath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina muses on her past and the addiction of magic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cost

**Author's Note:**

> Written early in season Two, before Regina speaks to Archie.

It has not worked out the way I planned.

 

Not at all.

 

We were never meant to escape. I was never meant to weaken in the presence of the babe lost so long ago. Once I mocked Maleficent for loving another and yet I have fallen into the same trap. I am trapped between the destiny I have built myself from blood and terror and the son who I have grown to love.

 

The pull between these extremes of me is exhausting and riddled with pain and confusion. The former is old territory, but the later is not. Mother taught me well to think ahead, to plan and scheme until the end result is your own. The last impulsive, childish thing I did was shove her into that mirror and my path was set.

 

Magic always comes with a price.

 

What they won't tell you is the addiction of it, the sheer need for its power, the sucking pull of that draw. Power is a vacuum, never to be filled, and it will take and take and take. Now, my promise to Henry to walk away from my dark path wrestles with that need. Am I even capable of being anyone else? For him, I will try.

 

Shaken and alone, I try to think, to plan, to survive. There is no one to help me now. How would I even ask? Who would I ask? No one understands the price I have paid, no one except Rumpelstiltskin and he I will not ask a mouthful of water in a desert. If magic's price is high, the interest he charges atop that is far worse.

 

Like a junkie separated from her drug, I am only trying to survive now, to fight the need for the sweet taste of the magic, its heady power in my veins. But Henry's pleading face, his anger, keep me a bay. For him I must do this, pay the price for my addiction, to rewrite my own future.

 

So I huddle alone, always alone, and hope to survive in this new world.


End file.
